"Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation." (Psalm 42:5)

"And Paul said, 'I did not know, brothers, that he was the high priest, for it is written, You shall not speak evil of a ruler of your people.’” (Acts 23:5)

January 20, 2026

Dear friends,

In the adventure movies of a generation ago, you would often see a character losing control of himself. He is panicking, blabbering, and falling apart. And then another character (a manly guy) would go over and slap the guy in the face, and say, "Pull yourself together, man!" Typically, the panicky guy would regain control and say, "Thanks, I needed that!"

ARE YOU DOWNCAST? Today, with much of our nation -- not to mention the world -- seemingly falling apart, we need help pulling ourselves together. Psalms 42 and 43 have a three-fold refrain, "Why are you downcast, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me?" (42:5, 11; 43:5) Some scholars believe that Psalms 42 and 43 were originally one psalm. It may have been so, given the repeated refrain. In both of these passages the Psalmist is speaking to himself in the sense that he is confronting his own thought process. Part of him knows what God has promised, and that part of him speaks, or takes control, of the part of himself that is giving in to doubt and gloom. It's a kind of self-talk, like saying to himself, "get a grip, man!"

Martyn Lloyd-Jones was a physician-turned-evangelist of the last century. In 1954, speaking on the topic of spiritual depression, he said, "Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself?" He continued, "The main art in the matter of spiritual living is to know how to handle yourself. You have to take yourself in hand, you have to address yourself, preach to yourself, question yourself. You must say to your soul: 'Why are thou cast down' -- what business have you to be disquieted? You must turn on yourself, and say to yourself, 'Hope thou in God'..." (From Lloyd-Jones on the Christian Life, by Jason Meyer, pp. 181, 189) He goes on to say that we need to remind ourselves of who God is, what he has done, what he will yet do, and what we will see in the future: "Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation."

Sometimes we are praying for peace of mind, when we may need to stop going over all our concerns and start to meditate on God's promises. I may need to give myself a mental slap in the face, so that I may recall, recite to myself, and think deeply on the truths of Scripture. And then to use God's words to preach to myself. God is not wringing his hands about the world's situation, and neither should I.

ARE YOU CAUSTIC? Another response I see among Christians today is engaging in public debate in an unchristian manner. We get full of ourselves. The second verse I cited above is when the Apostle Paul appeared before the high priest at a trial in Jerusalem (Acts 23), and not knowing whom he was addressing, called him a "whitewashed wall", which was probably the truth, but Paul quickly repented, citing Exodus 22:28, "You shall not speak evil of a ruler of your people." (Acts 23:5) Paul later said that we should show respect to ruling authorities (Rom 13:7), for they were put in place by God. (At the time it was Nero, who makes even Stalin look good.) Our Lord Jesus said that to call anyone a "fool" was to be in danger of incurring the fire of hell (Matt 5:22). And yet how casually many of us disparage others, and especially those whom the Lord has appointed over us.

It is to dishonor the sovereignty of God and to think too highly of ourselves. The beauty of democracy is that it diminishes class differences. The downside is that it diminishes it to the point every person begins to think too highly of himself, like we ourselves are little kings. C. S. Lewis spoke of this in his 1944 essay on "Democratic Education": "Democracy demands that little men should not take big ones too seriously; it dies when it is full of little men who think they are big themselves." [see link below]

We seem to have crossed a line recently when anti-ICE protestors disrupted a church service in Minneapolis, a violation of freedom of religion and the sanctity of Christian worship. In all the years of my opposition to abortion I've never once thought to disrupt a worship service of a church that supported Planned Parenthood. In fact, I would have been arrested promptly and taken to jail. I see little difference in principle -- in degree, yes, but not in principle -- between Fulani tribesmen attacking a church service in Nigeria and protestors attacking a worship service in Minneapolis. President John Adams once said, "Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people." It seems this very ideal has been abandoned.

Related to this is the inability of some of us to rise above our parties to address the weaknesses within our affiliations (lest we be deemed traitors). Party can take precedence over moral principle. I believe our involvement as Christians in politics must be different from other people. We cannot be partisan without regard to morality. We must be holy. For example, for our President to order an invasion of an allied nation (e.g., Greenland) seems to me to have no moral basis, as far as I can see, and so we should be free to speak out against it, no matter what our conservative friends may say. If innocent American citizens are being brutalized or deported, we should speak out against it. Likewise, if criminals are taken off the streets, we should approve of that, no matter what others may say.

Meanwhile, it seems both parties are being diverted into very narrow, energy-sapping efforts. One of my good friends has personal contacts in Iran right now. One contact, a man, has disappeared. The other told him by phone, as she looked out her window, that the street was filled with hundreds of bodies of Iranian protestors that had been shot. Surely this is a world crisis, but few seem to notice. We in the west are obsessing over rare earth minerals in Greenland, or the direction of a woman's SUV wheels in Minneapolis, while thousands of lives hang in the balance in the fight for freedom in Iran. This could become one of the greatest revolutions in recent history, or else, one of the worst humanitarian tragedies. Have you raised your voice for Iran? This would be a good time.

FURTHER READING.

-- "Democracy demands that little men should not take big ones too seriously; it dies when it is full of little men who think they are big themselves." -- C. S. Lewis, “Democratic Education" (1944) in Present Concerns (1986). Some great essays on democracy by C. S. Lewis in the aftermath of WW2 here.

-- "Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people." (President John Adams, to the Officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts, 1798)

-- There's no moral justification for taking Greenland.

-- "Let the church be the church."

FINAL QUOTE.

"I am very doubtful whether history shows us one example of a man who, having stepped outside traditional morality and attained power, has used that power benevolently." (C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man)

That's it for this week!

Sandy

Afterwords is an occasional newsletter on topics of interest to me (Sandy Young) since my retirement from full-time pastoral ministry. Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from The ESV Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version), copyright 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.